[Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?

[J. Garrett Morris]

On 1/28/07, Alexy Khrabrov <deliverable at gmail.com> wrote:
> How do people stumble on Haskell?

My story isn't as interesting as some of these.  My first quarter in
school, I took a course taught in Scheme.  I expressed some
dissatisfaction with the lack of types (and, in particular, the
collection of bugs that would have been easily caught with one), and
the grad TA pointed me to ML.  Some time later, I was talking to
another prof. in the hall about ML, and an older guy walking by
suggested that I was wasting my time and should go learn Haskell.  At
the time, the most obvious tutorial was the Gentle Introduction, which
left me confused for about a year or so, but eventually (and I have no
memory the trigger), I started writing code in Haskell and was
completely hooked.

(Incidentally, I eventually found out who the older guy was - Doug
McIlroy - and he ended up advising my honors work.  All in all, a very
convenient meeting.)

 /g